Launch Pad Read Free Page B

surface it sat on.
    It was an enormous concave mirror. A giant telescope, miles in diameter—built for what purpose?
    Lee stared out across it, marveling. It showed no signs of age, but certainly it must be ancient. Who had made it, and when? Sedna was one of the more eccentric objects in the solar system’s Kuiper belt, a dwarf world in a long slow orbit that took it to a farthest point nearly a thousand astronomical units from the sun, barely bound to the sun at all. Probably it had once been an interstellar wanderer, captured by the sun millions or even billions of years ago from the cold darkness between the stars. Where had it come from? What unknown race had built such a gargantuan telescope mirror, and for what purpose?
    He leaned over to put his faceplate right against the mirror surface, steadying himself with one hand carefully wrapped around the taut safety line. The surface was perfectly smooth, perfectly reflective.
    And suddenly the line was slack.
    He stood up, and saw the snowcat looming towards him in the darkness. He had anchored the cat against a hummock of ice, but waste heat from the reactor had melted it free, and it lurched downhill now, staggering drunkenly toward him. Without thinking, he took a step back away from it.
    He realized his error instantly. His cleated boots found no purchase, the surface of the mirror slicker than ice, and his feet shot out from under him. He reached out wildly as he fell. In the low gravity, everything happened in slow motion. With one hand, he grabbed onto the tool pack he had set down on the edge. For a moment he hovered there, on his belly, his feet dangling down the slope of the enormous mirror, hanging on with his left hand clutching the tool pack on the edge of the slope, the right still clenched tightly on the now-slack safety line.
    The snowcat slid forward, bounced against a ripple in the ice, toppled over onto its side, and ground its way to a halt with a silent spray of crimson snow.
    It rocked a little, and then settled into place.
    It seemed stable. Very slowly, trying not to move, he gathered up the slack in the safety cable and gave it a very careful tug. The snowcat stayed firmly in place. Working one-handed, he fixed the cable onto his belt clip.
    Gravity on Sedna was miniscule, less than a twentieth of a standard Earth gee, and it would be easy enough for him to pull himself out of the pit, even one-handed. He relaxed for a moment, the danger temporarily at bay. His left arm was getting stiff from the awkward position holding onto the tool pack on the rim, and he shifted it minutely.
    The pack that anchored him broke loose from the snow.
    In gloriously slow motion, the toolpack, and Lee, slid down onto the mirror. He flailed for the lip of the pit, seeking anything he could grab onto, but ended up with only a handful of snow. In the process he released the tool pack, and it slid away down the slope, spinning slightly and gathering speed as it slid.
    The safety line was still clipped to his belt, the other end attached to the snowcat. He slid down into the mirror, and when the slack in the safety-line had played out, it caught with a jerk, stretching slightly, but held. Above him, at the other end of the rope, the snowcat shuddered slightly, but didn’t move, stuck in the ice. He was swinging at the end of the line. He stretched out his arm, but the rim was just out of the reach of his outstretched fingertips. With one hand, he reached out and grabbed the rope to pull himself up.
    And the clip broke.
    The line whipped away from him, sliding through his fingers as if it had been greased, and with a slow, easy grace, Lee Rockross slid down the frictionless surface of the mirror.
    As he slid, he tried to scramble up the side of the slope. The rim of the dish was only inches away, but despite his frantic flailing he could get no purchase at all, and he coasted smoothly down, gathering speed at a slow but inexorable pace. It was maddeningly frustrating.
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